Simon son of John, a fisherman of Bethsaida and Capernaum, renamed Kēphas/Petros — 'Rock'. He is the first name in every list of the Twelve, the one who confesses and the one who denies, and in the first half of Acts he is the church's voice: he proposes the twelfth apostle here, preaches at Pentecost, is arrested repeatedly, is the first to take the message to a Gentile household, and then all but disappears from the book after chapter 15 as Paul takes over the narrative. Tradition, first recorded within a generation or two (1 Clement; later Eusebius), places his death in Rome under Nero, crucified — a detail Origen adds — head downward. In Acts 1 he does the plainest possible thing: he stands up in a room of a hundred and twenty and reads a psalm.